All Lower School children are invited to visit the Poetry Palace this Friday,  November 28 where they will gather under twinkling lights to read Poetry by candlelight. To celebrate the cosiness of this treasured form of writing, the children are welcome to change into their pajamas and bring along a flashlight, pillow or teddy bear.  If you'd like to know more about why we celebrate poetry,  read on!

Poetry enriches our use of language while also entertaining or inspiring us.  All of us here in Lower School enjoy a bit of play so we've been reading and writing poems and sharing our enthusiasm for the ways words can make pictures in our heads.  As we've listened to poetry being read aloud we've giggled and groaned, wondered, chanted, predicted and played with words. As we've written poems of our own we've concentrated on details, descriptions and sounds finding new and creative ways to express ourselves. We're learning while playing. What could be better?

The Gruffalo,  Stick Man, and Tiddler the storytelling fish are just a few of the characters whose colorful images fill the pages of some of our favorite picture books. Axel Scheffler's images are, for many of us, immediately recognizable so we were very happy to meet him in person on Thursday. 

Axel explained to us how he turns a plain text, often from writer Julia Donaldson, into sketches and eventually the illustrations we know so well. He kindly signed many books and enjoyed meeting our students as much as we enjoyed meeting him. 

When the Travelling Books company rang to ask if we'd allow them to send author/illustrator Jim Smith to us for a visit I knew we were going to be in for a good time.  Jim Smith uses cartooning to bring his Barry Loser characters to life and we were told he'd be happy to share some of his techniques with us.  Our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders were invited to bring their clipboards and drawing paper along to the sessions where everyone learned to draw such characters as Barry Loser, Sharonella, and of course Mrs Trumpetface! I can tell you that fun was had by all because Jim Smith told me several times that he thought our kids and our school were great. We liked him too. A lot. 

Thanks to all the parents (and students!) who supported our recent book fair by visiting and purchasing books. I hope you found some very good reads and if you haven't read the new books yet... what are you waiting for? Go! Read read read them!


Did you know that we earn a commission for every book sold during a book fair. This means the book fair company gives us a few free books for every £100 of books sold.  Sometimes they even give us a bit of cash. Either way,  our commission goes toward making library and our classroom libraries better and better all the time. 

This summer while our students and staff were enjoying their long days of fun and travel, many made sure they had plenty of good books to read during their quiet moments of rest and relaxation.  To see just how many countries our books have visited we've gathered photos of ourselves reading around the world. The library bulletin board shows that our readers were scattered all over the map, and our video (which will be updated regularly) will show you exactly who went where.  Take a peek at both when you can.